A Girl and Her Monster
by TepidAnger141
Summary: In which a little girl and an old monster learn to trust each other. Rating might go up for later chapters.
1. 1

A/n: This is my attempt at recreating the first month between young Integra and Alucard. It won't be very long, just a little story to keep the writer's block at bay. Plus, I've always felt that after everything Integra had to go through on that one night (her father's death, evil uncle, etc), she probably would've had some major issues to deal with in addition to Alucard.

**Disclaimer: **All Hellsing characters belong to Kouta Hirano.

* * *

**A Girl and Her Monster**

**01.**

* * *

At the beginning of December, Integra is an orphan. There is blood on the buckles of her shoes. She drags a monster from the dungeons.

"_You were my dream,"_ her father had said, gray and tattered and ending, _"My little dream amongst nightmares."_

She wonders now what those nightmares were about.

Integra feeds the thing—Alucard—with a small tub of sheep's blood. He scowls in distaste but drinks messily, bright red splashing down a cadaverous white face.

Nausea wrings her stomach and she hugs her knees on the floor next to him, trembling violently.

Her head feels feathery light, the air is too thick, too filled with the stench of blood. Her skin is clammy, clinging to her insides, save for the wound in her shoulder where _(Uncle shot her_) there is only scorching ache.

Integra's fingers dig into the sides of her calves. Something tight and painful is stuck in her chest, the pressure building. She doesn't know if she's going to cry or faint or maybe both.

In the end, Alucard makes the decision for her. He drops the tub, dry as a bone, licking his fingers. His tongue is pale purple and indescribably long.

"I want more," he says and these are the first words she's heard from anyone in the past two hours.

A small, hysterical laugh bubbles up in her throat. Integra stands on wobbling legs, barely feeling the floor beneath her.

"There is no more," she says and runs from the room.

* * *

Walter explains what he is. An instrument, a weapon. A darkness picked at and cut away until it fit into its chains. Abraham's legacy and her father's skeleton—too big for his closet.

_And now her… _

It was Abraham who gave him the name 'Alucard,' Walter tells her, though that is not his real name.

…_Her…her what…her pet…her tool …her death…_

She writes 'death' by accident on one of the financial reports she's still struggling just to read. The ink is blue and smears and no amount of white-out would work on it.

"_Damn it!_" she screams, cutting off Walter mid-sentence and hurls her father's favorite pen against the wall. It makes a sound eerily reminiscent of a bone snapping and for a moment, for that _one _moment, Integra feels viciously and childishly glad, like she has somehow made him pay for his lies.

But then Walter looks at her. He doesn't say a word, not even a frown over her language, but Integra suddenly feels ugly.

Walter walks over to the wall and picks up the pen. He deposits it gently back onto her fath—her—desk and apologizes for distracting her, that he'll be back after she's finished with work.

His hand is already on the doorknob when Integra speaks again.

"What's his actual name?"

She gazes at Walter with huge eyes, blue-pale, ill with a terrifying inkling she's had for a while now. The name wasn't new to her. She must have read it a dozen times with all the vampiric lore her father made her go through over the years.

It only ever sprang up in connection to one piece of fiction—one character. Every strand of hair is raised on Integra's arms and neck.

"Is he real?" she whispers.

Walter looks at her with barely concealed pity. He bows and exits without answering.

* * *

The next time she sees him, it's in the old laundry room, which leads to the dungeon staircase.

Integra pushes the door open, looking for her father's old coat and Alucard is there, half-seated on a table, a housemaid dangling in his arms.

She screams, the sound almost ripping itself from her throat. Part of her has been trying to forget he exists and has all but filed him away as a nightmare.

He jolts like a dog that's just been kicked in the ribs and drops his prize. The woman slumps onto the ground in front of her, unmoving. Integra distantly knows she should check for bitemarks or even a pulse, but her feet are frozen in place.

"What are you doing?" she asks dumbly.

Obvious question, even a fool could tell, but Alucard answers anyway. "I'm hungry."

His voice is devoid of all humanity. There's not a drop of remorse in that deep, clinical tone, though strangely there is no malice either. He is simply stating a fact.

Integra summons the courage to look at the woman, though she cannot bring herself to crouch down with Alucard only half a meter away. A vampire's favored biting spot is the neck, her father had said, though if he's bitten the housemaid there then he's hidden it well.

Desperately, she tries to recall what other symptoms vampiric bites cause, but she can feel white fear beginning to cloud those memories. Age has not yet given her the strength to send it away and it consumes her wholeheartedly. Eventually, nothing is being processed through her mind save for one thought.

He is hungry. The _vampire_ is hungry.

She clenches her fists, hard enough her knuckles hurt. The laundry room has no weapons, but there is an old antique kettle sitting by the sink. It is her only chance; he's still drained—hair an unnatural shade of gray, skin papery white. If she could just get to it, the thing's made of pure silver…

In hindsight, she wonders if Alucard spoke then to spare her her naivety.

"I wasn't going to kill her."

It almost sounds like an excuse. Integra's eyes are wide and incredulous when she looks back at him, but his features barely shift. If anything he looks almost hesitant, like he doesn't know if he's said the right thing.

A monster is trying to explain itself to her. _God._ She can't think about it for long.

"Why didn't you say anything?" she finds herself asking, "Why didn't you ask for more?"

He blinks like she's just said something very odd.

"There is no more."

Silence.

Integra stares at him, but Alucard's gaze shifts down toward the woman again. Something wistful flashes by those red eyes and it suddenly, _finally_, occurs to her that it's been five days since that last shallow little pool of sheep's blood.

Her fingers twitch—_he must be weaker than she thought—_but she fails to move.

Five days, he's been waiting for her to feed him.

"There's more now. Sheep's blood, that is."

She swallows the lump in her throat when his eyes shoot up to meet hers again. Slowly to hide her tremble, she turns away, even as her brain screams at her not to expose her back.

"Come on, I'll show you." Integra's heart is in her mouth, pounding violently. God knows she can't do anything if he decides to ignore her and eat the maid after all. _(she's not ready to console widows and orphans yet)_

But Alucard drops soundlessly off the table, stepping over the woman's unconscious body. Integra doesn't wait until he gets close to start walking away, but she can hear him gliding after her.

_What are you doing? _ Her own horrified voice echoes back at her.

Unlike Alucard, she has no answer for it.

* * *

"Who were the suppliers my father used?" she asks without explanation.

Walter replies without needing one, "St. George's Hospital."

"Do we still have a contract with them?"

"Yes, your father never cancelled it."

Integra nods and scribbles down a reminder to herself, intent on calling the dean later.

"I have to feed him," she says, though Walter has made no comment.

"Yes, my lady."

"He can't survive on sheep's blood."

Walter doesn't reply.

She shifts a few folders around until she has unearthed the book she'd been using as reference. The mission reports are generally simple to understand, having been written by soldiers _(her soldiers now)_ and she's slowly growing accustomed to the jargon of the financial ones. Her feet swing as she finds her page.

"I have to keep him," she says again, more to herself than Walter, and waves her dismissal.

The butler bows and heads toward the door.

"Walter," she calls suddenly and he turns. Integra gestures to the gun on her desk.

"Could you take that somewhere else?" Her voice is small and soft.

He bows again and obeys.


	2. 2

**02.**

* * *

On the day of her first meeting with the Round Table, Integra has her skirt ironed and her best blouse freshly pressed. She opts out of any jewelry or makeup, for fear of looking even more childish, combing her hair and polishing her glasses instead.

Most of the time she spends studying her father's notes, the ones he use to make before such meetings and she's still looking them over in the car as Walter drives her. While her father has always taught her never to judge by outward appearances, Integra is certain that's all that will happen today. She cannot allow incompetence to be added to the fire.

When they arrive, Walter pulls open the door for her and wishes her luck, but she can barely hear him over the hammering of her heart. The men seated in the room have flat, unimpressed eyes and they are already judging and condemning. Integra grasps at what bravery she possesses, trying not to wobble on her heels—_which was such_ _a _stupid_ idea—_and takes her seat.

It is a disaster.

The members dismiss her almost immediately, criticizing her reports and patronizing her suggestions. They fire questions at her in clipped, impatient tones and demean her stuttering answers. Needle-thin remarks shoot through the air, caustic mentionings of her age and gender and _your father was never so disrespectful._

She is nearly in tears by the end of it. Walter is beside himself with fury.

"What kind of weak men would bully a child?" he rants the whole drive home and Integra hides her face in her hands.

The meeting with the soldiers that night is not much better, though the men at least bother to listen to her. In terms of responsiveness, however, the sea of faces is relatively the same. Some of them look patronizing, some resentful and some just stare at her like they don't know why this little girl is standing in front of the director's podium.

"They'll get over it," the Commander tells her, smiling kindly, "These are not weak men. They're just being proud right now." _Too proud to serve a child, _but that goes unsaid.

Integra sits in the library that night, curled up in her father's favorite chair, having never felt so alone. For all this talk about weak men, the only weak one she can think of is her.

"That's because you are."

Alucard saunters in, blood pack in hand. Integra jumps nearly a foot into the air.

He chuckles and it's disturbing how human it sounds. "You sure jump a lot."

Integra stares at him as he settles himself on the rug next to her. Three days of human blood and he looks worlds better, hair the shade of rich ebony now, his skin smoother and less desiccated. He really is quite handsome.

Alucard suddenly looks up at her, leering, and she remembers too late about his telepathy.

"Like what you see, hmm?" he purrs, eyes half-lidded, like he doesn't find it ridiculous at all to be saying that to a twelve year old.

Integra's face becomes a flaming, incandescent red, but it only lasts for a second before something seems to sputter out in her. She sighs and leans back against the headrest.

"I think it's impossible to humiliate me any more tonight."

Alucard hums and nods, his seductive expression vanishing. "Your little meetings today."

"They weren't 'little,'" she snaps, because she can be angry with him at least if no one else, "These first impressions were important." She slumped, feeling her eyes grow hot again. "And I failed."

He looks at her. It isn't a pitying gaze though, like Walter's or the Commander's. Instead he seems almost contemplative.

Integra wonders tiredly what a vampire could possibly have to say. Certainly nothing kind, but then Walter and the Commander were kind and that has only taken her heart and twisted it further.

There's a long silence before he speaks again.

"Would you like to know what you did wrong?"

She turns in surprise to face him. But Alucard isn't grinning, his eyes aren't sparkling with mockery. He sips blood from his absurd straw poked into the packet. It occurs to her a beat later that he's waiting for her answer.

"How would you know?" she mutters, "You weren't even there."

He scoffs, "I didn't need to be there. It's very obvious why they don't take you seriously."

Integra's shoulders droop. "It's because I'm a child, isn't it?" _Of course it is. _"And a girl."

"No," Alucard says simply, "That isn't in your favor, but it isn't why either. All humans age. And I have known women greater than any man could ever be."

That last sentence is said with a shadow of deeper meaning and with such softness Integra shivers.

"Then why?" she whispers.

"It doesn't matter if they're weak," he looks at her, eyes unfathomably and inhumanly red, "It only matters if _you _are. And you are. For now anyway. Even with all these pretty new toys and lights, in the end humans are still animals too. They won't follow a leader who can't control them."

"So this is about control."

"It always has been," Alucard purrs, drawing closer, "Show them what you are capable of. Show them why they live and die at your command."

"I just want their faith."

"You want the wrong things," he says, licking his lips, "How will _you_ ever get their faith? A little girl in too big shoes who still needs her butler's signature."

Integra curled inward, cut more deeply than she'd imagined by the mockery in his words.

"What should I want then?"

Alucard's smile is sudden and for all his unnatural youth, deeply horrifying to see. In the flickering shadows of firelight, his features are contorted and ghastly, lips shrunken rather than pulled backwards, so there are more teeth on display than there should be. Blood runs in trickles down his fangs.

"Fear of course," he hisses, and there is no trace of man in his voice, "Faith is so expensive, so rare. What does it matter what the men below think of your orders, but rather that they simply carry them out? Obedience comes from power and only fear can create such power."

At some point, Alucard has gotten close enough to be practically leaning against the armrest. His eyes are glowing—a febrile excitement roiling within them that she cannot begin to understand.

Integra nods quickly, mostly to get him to back off, though part of her finds it perfectly rational.

"And why would anyone ever be afraid of me?"

Alucard simply smiles again and she knows the answer already.

* * *

To say the method works is an understatement.

At the next Round Table meeting, Integra arrives once more in her best blouse and skirt, with polished glasses and combed hair. She makes her reports and is once again criticized and disapproved of. When another comment goes flying, however, of how she is too young, too inexperienced, and her father would never have—

"I am not my father," Integra cuts in, looking at each of them.

On cue, Alucard arrives in a vortex of shadows and crimson eyes. He seeps through the wall like some low-budget movie monster, hair spiraling wraith-like around him.

It's all terribly dramatic and Integra has to hold back her giggles as he lands beside her. The Council members bolt from their seats. Some of them scream in shock and all but fly to the other side of the room. Some of them, like Sir Islands, stare wide-eyed and incredulous, faces white as bone. They recognize Alucard like they recognize a demon returned from Hell.

Integra stifles another giggle and introduces him in her sweetest voice. When she brings up her proposal a second time more than half the Table agree without even listening to what it is.

Something giddy rises in Integra, nearly whiting the edges of her vision and it's surprising how good it feels. Like she is finally tasting the air after being held underwater for so long.

The soldiers are less courteous at the second meeting, interrupting her and exchanging quiet jeers. When they see Alucard, the same reaction occurs, only with much more cursing and scrambling for cover. They forget the guns they're holding in their hands and trip over each other trying to back away.

Alucard's crimson eyes rake over the men hungrily though he goes where she directs him to.

Integra makes her speech without another word from anyone. It's amazing, she finds, how instantly the arrogance in their eyes shrivels into nothing. A chilly, suffocating air grips the crowd and she knows that it is fear she holds in her hands—crushing and limitless.

It feels so good it scares her slightly.

The Commander, who is old and scar-ridden and been with Hellsing too long, is the only one who remembers Alucard. He grabs Integra after the meeting.

"Been twenty years since I'd last see him," he says, and while his voice is even, his face is sickly gray, "Thought he'd been put down."

"In a manner of speaking," she replies, "Down into the cellar."

The Commander doesn't laugh and there is fear in his aged eyes as well, though it is clearly not of her. "What do you need him for, miss? My men know what they're doing. What do you need a monster like that for?"

"That is hardly your business," Integra snaps, unexplainably offended, "I have my purposes for him."

The man's lips flatten into a colorless line. Even though he is a military man, he hardly ever seemed angry and even now, the expression he gives her is more of disappointment than anger. It makes Integra want to shrink down and look at her shoes, but she holds her gaze stubbornly.

"Do you know why he was down there?"

She falters. The Commander reads into her silence and the nakedness of her face.

"Your father was afraid, Integra," he says quietly, "And you should be too."

* * *

_but she is afraid. _

_the air ducts still go 'thump, thump' at night from the knobby knees of a young girl. she wakes screaming and even that cannot drown out the voices that echo her walls. the gunshot._

_Fraulein. Fraulein. _

_Alucard may have been the monster of many, many stories, _

_but he is not the one in hers. _


	3. 3

**03.**

* * *

There is a vampire in Yorkshire, who has singlehandedly slaughtered an entire town. Unlike most of his kind, he has a certain restraint about him that helps him escape a second, final death.

But like most of his kind, his hunger is never ending.

He is the first mission Integra undertakes and five days later, he is still missing but five of her men are dead (each for a day). Integra cries herself to sleep the first death and then never cries again. Failure grows heavy and fat upon her shoulders. She supposes she should get use to attending funerals.

During each one, there is a woman. A daughter, a wife, a mother. None of them blame her, since such is the sacrifice for fighting monsters. Integra can't bear to look at them.

The idea of Alucard prods at her thoughts. A monster to find a monster. It is certainly a practical idea, not that anyone else seems to find it a particularly good one. They are all afraid, even though in retrospect, there was never any need for them to worry.

Integra cannot find the strength to lift the gun at her side—too weak to pull the trigger and too afraid of what she will see.

* * *

A week has passed before Walter tentatively brings up therapy. He expresses his concern over her nightmares and worries that she is not dealing the right way with what has happened.

Logically, Integra knows he is right. Given the close proximity between her father's death and nearly her own, trauma should not have begun to describe it. Yet the pain has almost dulled away and Integra feels less like a gaping wound and more like hardened steel with each day.

She has gotten into the rhythm of life as Hellsing's Director, balancing it with lessons from private tutors. It is busy and exhausting, but Integra accepts the life as hers, even though it is one devoid of friends and lovers and first kisses beneath the moon.

For the first time she can remember, Integra feels strong. In control.

"I'm fine, Walter," she says, swiftly reading through the new financial reports, "I'm dealing with it. Don't worry."

Not worry looks like the last thing Walter is going to do.

"You're so young though," he says. It is filled with genuine love and sadness and maybe he hadn't even meant to say it out loud, but Integra feels it in a sudden, piercing irritation.

"Well that's a shame then, isn't it? But this is how it happened. I was alone, Walter. Where were _you _on that night?"

She regrets her words before they even completely leave her mouth.

"I…I'm sorry, Walter."

"No, my lady, I am," Walter says, and his face is lined with guilt that has little to do with what _has _happened but what _will_.

* * *

_the firing range has gray walls. it is too big and too small and smells of gunpowder and mildew. _

_there is nothing like watching a soldier tend to guns. bolts are opened and springs aligned. slides are pulled and magazines loaded._

_it is almost art, almost music._

_she recognizes them all. glocks and ak-47s and smith and Wesson._

_they are as intrinsic to her memories as the tales of vampires._

_And yet… _

There you are, my fraulein.

_her shoulder aches with the notes of gunshots._

* * *

"Isn't it past your bedtime?'"

Integra startles backwards in her chair, barely stifling her shriek of surprise. She whips her head upwards and finds Alucard half-through the ceiling, hanging upside down like some large demented bat.

"Don't do that," she breathes, nearly wilting in her seat.

Alucard merely grins and slips entirely in, floating soundlessly down.

"That must be a fascinating book," he says, gesturing to where Integra has been staring at the samepage for nearly half an hour. He glides closer, peering curiously.

"It's nothing," she mutters and slams the book shut, but when Alucard looks at her again it's with that same considering gaze.

"If you want to look at guns, there's no need to _read _about them," he says, tilting his head like she is truly a curious thing, "You have an armory."

"I don't want to look at them!"

There is a desperation in her voice that she does not mean to let in, that makes her casual dismissal a frightened yell.

Alucard stares at her, eyes perhaps widened by a fraction. She scrambles to explain herself, not particularly looking forward to being mocked. He cuts her off before she can even begin.

"Why are you afraid?" It is a question spoken with genuine confusion.

"I'm not," she snaps too quickly, "I don't expect a _vampire _to understand."

Alucard is utterly unruffled.

"You're being pathetic," he continues, as if she hadn't said anything at all, "Guns are just tools. They don't have the will or the mind to hurt you. What hurts you is the wielder."

Integra scowls at him, and perhaps it is out of childish resentment that she speaks next without thinking.

"Like how Abraham wielded you?"

For a split second, shock flashes bright and raw upon his features, so instantaneously it could've been of her imagination. It is strange on his face, whose only expressions so far have been mocking looks and alien indifference. It's almost exciting.

But then Alucard's eyes meet hers and there is fury and _hatred _and such ancientness in both that whatever petty satisfaction she'd gotten from it evaporates. Jagged terror grips her heart as Integra realizes her mistake.

Suddenly though, as if a switch has been flipped, Alucard calms. The antipathy recedes from his riled frame and vanishes as if it never were.

He smiles, and it is sharp enough to cut.

"Yes, I was his weapon. In every way. I was as powerless to hurt him as a gun without its wielder."

He looks at her frozen in her seat, eyes wide, and at the book on her desk.

"Your uncle was not Abraham," he says, "He never came close. A _tiny _man, even tinier than you. Why are you afraid?"

Alucard disappears without waiting for her answer, fading into the night. It is just as well, since Integra cannot remember how to form words.

She sits there for a long time afterwards, fear churning in her gut, along with something heavy and vast that can only be guilt.

* * *

The next day, she asks Walter to fetch her father's gun. The metal is cool against her palm and her fingers look fragile in comparison. At the firing range, she shoots until she hits the targets in the dead center of their heads, until her uncle's splattered blood is all she can see.

Then Integra breathes. Once. Twice. Three times. Her heart trembles.

_Why are you afraid?_

She reloads.

* * *

She accompanies the men on their mission that night. It is her first time on the field and the soldiers stare at her, some in bemusement and some in annoyance though none dare say a word.

The targets are five ghouls still staggering through the woods where the Yorkshire vampire left them. They are short work for the men and not more than an hour has passed before they're loading up to depart.

Integra inspects the blood-flecked grass and the five decomposed bodies, not so much horrified as morbidly fascinated. She ponders what properties vampire blood must contain to be able to force life back into the dead.

A cool, moist hand on her ankle shatters these thoughts. Integra whips her head down to see a male ghoul, mouth gaping, decayed teeth hanging by threads. Its eyes are two red pinpricks. Somewhat vaguely, Integra notes his tattered tweed suit and thinks he must have been an accountant.

Walter shouts something and she can see two men sprinting toward her out of the corner of her eye. There is no time though, no time for them to reach her, no time to shield her flesh from the rotting death of a bite. Integra raises her father's gun, fingers stumbling.

And suddenly, she is in that dungeon room again.

Her uncle begs for mercy while simultaneously spitting curses, raving about birthrights even as she aligns his head with the barrel. The gun is so heavy, _so heavy,_ she can barely keep it straight.

_I've been waiting…_

_Little fraulein._

…_twenty years…_

…_TWENTY YEARS…_

_Hellsing is MINE __**MINE**__..._

An arm rises from the darkness, gaunt and clad in dusty leather, wrapping around her front. Integra rests her own arms in relief upon the crook of its elbow.

She tightens her hands on her father's gun. Her uncle's mouth is wide in mid-scream, face pooled in sweat, but the arm beneath her is like iron.

_What's your name?_

She pulls the trigger.

The ghoul's head bursts open like a ripe melon, spraying half on her and half on the grass. The two men reach her a second later. One grabs her by the arms and drags her away, while the other trains his gun, as if a headless corpse would still pose a threat.

Despite how counterproductive it is to earning their respect, Integra is grateful for the man-handling. It hides how her legs have already collapsed beneath her.

* * *

She lets Walter fuss all the way home, lets him wrap her in blankets and call the doctor, despite being told repeatedly she's uninjured. Part of Integra wants to push him away, but Walter looks as if he's on the edge of a worry-induced stroke.

The doctor pokes and prods as always, asking pointless questions. He then converses with Walter over the top of her head while Integra stares at her shoes. There is blood on the buckles.

When it is finally over, they order her off to bed. The local priest, who has somehow found his way to the manor as well, insists on a small bottle of holy water around her neck for future protection. Integra doesn't bother to comment that it was a ghoul that attacked her and that holy water will do absolutely nothing even if she were attacked by more down the line.

Instead, she just accepts it and loops it over her head. She lies in bed, waiting for the house to grow quiet. And when it does, she slips from her sheets, ghosting down the stairs to the old laundry room.

The dungeon door screeches horribly as it opens and there are no lights installed. Integra shuffles from foot to foot, hesitating, but something inside her knows she must see him now.

Groping her way down using the wet stones along the wall, she is half-way there when she trips.

Sent hurtling into the darkness, moldy air whipping by her face, she cannot help but scream and shield her head, waiting for impact. It comes, but not in the way she imagined.

"Oof!" There is no kickback from the arms that catch her weight and Integra wheezes, the breath knocked clean out of her. In her swimming vision, she sees two crimson eyes floating in the dark.

The cork of the bottle around her neck pops.

There is a second to remember she's still wearing it, a second to hear the water trickle out, and a second to hear something hiss and peel and Alucard's pained gasp of surprise. Then the arms around her fling her away like a ragdoll.

Integra shrieks again, expecting the brutal agony that is a skull fracture, when she feels something fly past her. A beat later the arms catch her again.

For a moment, she simply lies there, gasping as her heart pounds frantically against her breast.

"Th…Thank you," she breathes out when she is finally able to.

There is no reply but a crackle and a spark. Two rows of lighted torches wink into life around them. Alucard's white face is tinged orange by the fire, but is otherwise expressionless. He sets her down roughly, before turning away.

White smoke rises from the left side of his neck and she can see the flesh there, blistering red from the spilled holy water.

"U-um, are you alright?" she asks, feeling very awkward and even guiltier.

Alucard pauses, before looking flatly back over his shoulder.

"If you want your punishments to make any lasting impression you shouldn't ask about my health afterwards."

Integra blinks at him.

"Punishment?" she repeats, before her eyes widen in understanding, "No. No! I-I didn't come here to _punish_ you."

He turns around fully, eyes flickering, though there is a hint of angry disbelief in them.

"Oh, really? So I suppose you came for a splash fight then?"

"No! That was an accident, alright? I didn't mean to, I—" She takes a breath, "I came to apologize."

"For what I said yesterday," she hurries on, feeling her face heat up as Alucard's belligerence vanishes, "…About Abraham. You were just trying to help and it was uncalled for. I just…wanted to say I'm sorry—"

Alucard suddenly bursts out laughing. Integra flinches backwards as if the sound has burned her.

"_Sorry_?" He repeats, utterly incredulous like the word is completely foreign to him, "What are you _sorry _for? You can say anything you want to me."

Now it is her turn to stare.

"That…that doesn't mean I should."

Alucard is hardly listening. He runs a hand violently through his hair, irritating his burns at the movement though he doesn't seem to notice.

"Let me share something with you. I have been a slave of your family for over a century and no one has been sorry. Not your father or your father's father and certainly not Abraham. I have done nothing but kill and raze and raze and kill for as long as I can remember and not once have I been sorry," he laughs again, once sharply, before his grin vanishes.

"It begs the question of what is wrong with you. Why have you not sent me out yet? Your men risk their puny lives and die in droves each night while you let me lounge around your mansion drinking iced blood. How utterly ruthless. Who did you take after? Certainly not that treacherous coward of a father. Must be your mother then. Women can be _so _cruel, I would know they—"

The slap comes from nowhere, but the sound cuts across the corridor, over the crackle of flames and Integra's heaving chest. There is not even a mark to show she's hit him at all, but Alucard's head turns with her strike, black hair tossing across white forehead and cheekbones.

"You will not ever," she whispers, "speak of my mother."

He is silent and she cannot see his face because it is blurred with her own hot tears. Integra turns and runs back up the stairs.


	4. 4

**04.**

* * *

_Look in the basement, _her father had said_, There you will find the instrument for your salvation._

* * *

"I'm sending him to Yorkshire," she tells Walter, who has for all intents and purposes, been mostly quiet about the whole Alucard affair.

It is two nights after and Integra's hurt has ebbed away like a bone set wrong. She hasn't seen Alucard since or told anyone about the exchange between them, but somehow Walter seems able to tell.

"It is what he was made for," he agrees, "And it's all he knows."

Integra stares hard at the papers in her hand. There is a thick pause, before Walter speaks again.

"What will your orders be?"

That earns him a confused glance.

"…orders?"

"For the hunt. He needs them."

She stares.

"…my lady?"

"Sorry, it's just," Integra frowns, almost to herself, "You make it sound like he's an animal."

Walter looks surprised for a moment. Then bemused. Alucard is not an animal, no, Walter had learned that decades ago. But he isn't what Integra keeps trying to see him as either.

"That was not my intention."

There is a silence.

"Tell him to kill it," Integra grips her father's gun, "Tell him to find and kill it."

* * *

She deliberately takes her time coming to Yorkshire. Alucard's harshness was as hurtful as it was mystifying, and it inspires only helpless rage inside Integra that cannot be released. His words replay in her head for hours and somewhere along the line it begins to sound like _she_ has hurt _him_, though it is clearly the other way around.

Admittedly, mentioning Abraham had been distasteful, but she had tried to apologize and _that _certainly hadn't gone well. What could her great-grandfather possibly have done anyway? Walter has told her of the Hellsing contract, how the blood of her family has given this creature power beyond reckoning. They have made him strong. She can't reconcile that with the piercing hatred she'd seen that night.

So it is with a petulant need that she drags her feet. Her father's deep, scolding voice reverberates in her skull, calling her irresponsible and unworthy of devotion. Integra has no defense for it, all too intent on spiting Alucard in any way she can, even if it is just to annoy him by making him wait.

Only, he does not wait.

Initially there seems nothing amiss when they arrive. The grass is torn up in several areas and fragments of wood and glass litter the ground from fences and windows.

The house though is intact and the soldiers are standing next to it, staring at something in the backyard. When Integra counts heads they are all present. She only realizes something is wrong when one of the men suddenly sprints away and vomits into a nearby bush.

"What's going on?" she demands, but no one answers.

The Commander stares lifelessly at her. "You took your time, miss."

Integra begins struggling her way past the men. Walter makes a half-hearted attempt to stop her, but his eyes are filled with pity and resignation.

"What's going on?! Why are you all standing here? Where—"

Her voice dies abruptly, cutting off with a choked sound.

The Yorkshire vampire is a little boy.

He is wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt. A picture rests in the middle, a fire truck maybe, though most of it is obscured by the skeletal white glove resting casually over it. The end of the shirt is curled and partially shredded, something white and bone-like pokes out from the bottom.

A brown smear of intestines trail to his little cargo pants, a few meters away at a tree stump.

She can still see the small, white feet dangling limply out of the ends.

Integra walks forward, though she cannot feel her legs doing so. The grass rustles crisply, stiff with blood.

"Alucard…" she whispers and it occurs to her in some distant, detached corner of her mind that it is the first time she's said his name.

The dark figure leaning over the boy stirs and raises its ebony head.

Alucard's face is smeared a bright, glistening crimson. When he shifts, his hair spreads and pulls away from the boy to reveal a child's blue-white face. Needle teeth line the front of his cherubic little mouth, but Integra cannot process them. All she can process is how his arms are still feebly struggling against Alucard's hold—prey trapped by the lion's paw.

"What are you doing?" she asks softly.

Alucard spares the boy a fleeting glance, like he may as well have been ashes already. He looks at her with hollow, alien eyes.

"Killing it."

Integra is silent. She chokes a scream back down her throat along with the burning taste of bile.

"No," she says, "you're torturing him."

Alucard's lip twitches almost like he's going to laugh, but then his expression suddenly smoothens out.

"I suppose," he agrees, nonchalant though his voice is a black hiss, "Don't you want it to suffer? It killed five of your men. "

It did. Integra knows this creature is no boy. As pink as its little lips are, beneath them hide lines of shark-like teeth. Under the fringe of its blonde hair are eyes filled with blood and evil. It's not a boy. It's a monster.

But that doesn't make him look any less like a boy.

"Stop," she whispers, "It's cruel."

"Cruel?" he tilts his head, eyes bright and cold, "You think I am cruel?"

The soldiers suck in one terrified collective breath and she can see Walter tightening his gloves out of the corner of her eye. One small part of Integra wants to run behind him, bunch his vest in her hands and scream until her throat bleeds.

But all of her knows that it's too late for that.

"Finish this," she says, failing at keeping her voice from croaking.

Alucard licks blood off his long, bony fingers. "But I'm hungry."

A shudder rattles deep through Integra's core. _Oh, God. God._

"I don't care. Finish it."

He turns to her and his smile is formed from all the darkness of the world.

"No."

There is a long, terrible beat of silence. A small whimper is heard from somewhere amongst the soldiers. They look like they're suddenly realizing a twelve year girl is all that can protect them. Walter takes another step forward, wires slithering down his hands, cursing himself for letting it get this far. She is only a child after all and she can't be expected to—

Integra pulls her father's gun out of its holster.

"I won't ask again," she whispers, aiming it between Alucard's red, red eyes, "Finish this."

The soldiers shift in surprise and Walter stops dead in his tracks. The creature just stares at her.

She racks the slide. "Do it. Now."

"I thought you were afraid of guns," he says, almost conversationally, "Do you think you can kill me with that?"

"I'm not trying to kill you," she says, barely keeping the tremor from her voice, "It's loaded with blessed silver-tipped rounds. A shot to the head is going to hurt."

Alucard smirks almost bitterly, showing red-stained teeth.

"So is this how it will be then? Will you hurt me now?"

Integra doesn't reply. "Finish him."

He stares at her again for a long, careful moment. There is something in his eyes—a little like disappointment and strangely, a little like relief.

Then he lifts the hand still pinning down the boy's torso and plunges it into his chest.

The sounds of ribs snapping send most of the men to the bushes, though Integra does not (_cannot_) move. The boy screeches like an animal, rattling Integra's skull, and in one final burst of desperate anger, his claws suddenly spring upward and rake deep down Alucard's shoulder.

He explodes into gray dust a second later.

Alucard never even looks at him.

"As the master wishes," he says, and his flesh wounds seal with a hiss.

* * *

Integra spends the car ride home in a numb haze. Walter talks urgently and quietly into his phone next to her. It sounds like he's calling the doctor again.

She turns away from him, jostling the gun that still lays haphazardly in her lap. She keeps remembering Alucard's eyes against the blue tint of the window.

The coldness in them was unfathomable. Gone is the creature that sat next to her on the rug—the one that told her she could become great. Perhaps he had never existed in the first place.

Perhaps Alucard's words to her that night on the stairs were not so much a loss of control, but the loss of a mask.

Vampires lie. It's in their nature and her father had never let her forget that. She doesn't know why this should surprise her, or even more why it should hurt.

But it does.

* * *

_He hears Walter long before his chamber door opens. _

"_I knew you would come eventually," he says, swinging a leg off his coffin. _

"_What are you trying to achieve?" Walter demands, ignoring him, "Does it please you so greatly to ruin the innocence of children?"_

_He almost scoffs. Walter and his delusions. He's somehow become more idealistic with age. _

"_She was never meant for innocence, Walter," he blinks slowly, "You know that."_

"_And you couldn't spare her what little she had left?" Walter spits, eyes blazing. _

_He sees in them the desperate anger of a father—Walter, who is ruthless and cruel and forgives no one. _

_Some part of Alucard still wonders in vain if he had ever felt such a way towards his own children. He can't remember. His memory is full of holes, full of blood and snow and Abraham's ice-cold smile, stretching out into eternity. _

"_I am what I am," he says simply, truthfully. "Wouldn't you rather she learn this sooner than later?" _

_Walter is silent for a long beat. _

"_Are you afraid?" he suddenly asks._

_His eyebrow arches slightly, darkly amused. "That she'll hurt me? They all do."_

"_That she'll save you." _

_Alucard laughs, loud and harsh and it echoes like a nightmare across the walls. Even if some part of him remembers her eyes, blue-white, and the gun in her hand. Even if some part of him knows she is destined for greatness, like how weakness had been destined for himself. _

"_No one can save me," he says, and it's without grief, without regret. A simple statement. _

_Walter looks at him with abject disgust, and perhaps the slightest bit of pity._


End file.
